People come and go, the woods endures, Chapter 3

Somewhere we have a summary of the titles issued for our property since the first homestead, and so I can't give a complete history in that respect.

I do remember that the Kero family bought the property sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Kero is a shorter version of the original Finnish name. They tried their hand at fox farming. We don't know if they succeeded, but we still haven't succeeded in pulling up all of the tangle of grass, chicken wire, and wood frames.

Eventually they moved to Michigan, presumably to work in the auto industry. Their daughter Nora Holm inherited the property and later sold it to us.

Once there was a co-operative grocery in the big clearing on the north side of Little Creek Road. Supposedly people would walk to it on the path that runs to the SSE from our cabin. We don't know if that was before or after the Keros occupancy. Now that clearing is the Rack Shack, a small cabin and garage owned by a group of hunters. They are a friendly bunch, but neither of us takes the time to walk across the road and visit.

After the Keros moved the property was rented several times. I met one woman who said her first child was born in the house on the property in the same year I was born. A couple who we later met rented it in the seventies. Somebody else rented it after them. At the time our friends rented it, there was no well and they had to haul water in. I would guess that they got their water from the Rack Shack well; it is excellent water.

The satellite picture was taken in the morning; the shadows are the west of many objects. So, some details get lost, like exactly where is our drive to the road. One feature that does show is the path to west of the northernmost large field. Along much of that segment, Ernie Nelmark planted red pines decades ago. Ernie lived in a cabin to the west of where the Rack Shack is. Those red pines are now dozens of feet tall and a foot or more in diameter.

Kevin Hellman used that same path as a logging road twenty or so years ago. He widened and leveled it for his equipment and continued it into the Forest Service land. To level the road, Kevin dug "borrow holes" on each side. Most of these still remain; many covered by overgrowth. Kevin cut mostly aspen both on Nora Holm's property and Forest Service land. When we bought the property, the regenerated aspen was only 10-12 feet tall and less than an inch in diameter.

See http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/09/people-come-and-go-woods-endures.html and http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/09/people-come-and-go-woods-endures_23.html for the previous chapters.

People come and go correction

I had assumed that people would see a satellite view of Brimson in my previous post. I should have included the following:

Before you go any further, make sure you have a satellite view by clicking on the button in the upper right hand corner of the map.

I have corrected that post and will delete this post after a few days.

People come and go, the woods endures, Chapter 2

For this chapter, you might want to see a satellite view of our Brimson property. Go to Google Maps and enter

Little Creek Rd, Brimson, MN

You'll see a little red balloon and a big white balloon for Giving Ground Farm, a herbal products company run by a friend of ours.

Before you go any further, make sure you have a satellite view by clicking on the button in the upper right hand corner of the map.

Zoom in towards the red balloon until you can see the roads. Giving Ground Farm's balloon is just east of a bend in the road. If you move west to where the road heads directly west again, that is just past the east boundary of our property. The middle of the road is our northern boundary; the next intersection is our northwest corner. The clearcut to the South is Forest Service land and is our approximate southern boundary.

In the upper middle there are three clearings. The northernmost is where we built our cabin; the easternmost is where the old house and well were, and the westernmost is what we call "Jan's field".

The little line going southwest is what we call our Park Path; the line going SSE we call our Raspberry Path; and the line wiggling between them just north of the clear cut is our Path of Least Resistance. The first two existed before we bought the place and I'll write about them another day.

To the east is a very dark area; this is a stand of black spruce which is only partly on our property. I don't know much about the dark line running through it other than it once was wide enough to drive through, but that would have been decades ago.

The darker area to the west of the cabin are mostly balsam fir; the less dark areas to the south are mostly aspen with some birch, willow, and way too much alder. The lighter area to the east of the cabin once had lots of aspen but they were blown down in the mid 90s.

I had cut loops to the east and the west of the main loop, but I haven't kept them open for three years or more.

For some ground views of our place in the woods, see my Brimson pictures on Flickr.

Next time I'll get back to the history of our place.

For Chapter 1, see
http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/09/people-come-and-go-woods-endures.html

People come and go, the woods endures

Sunday as I hauled brush from where I had cut it at the side of a trail to where I would chip it, I reflected on how transitory my work was. I would take two cartloads and then rest by reading a book. Two more cartloads, rest with a book.

About five years ago it wasn't this way. Sure, I'd work about an hour then read an hour, but that was to enjoy our cabin and its surroundings rather than work, work, work.

Once my skin allergy got worse, I went to our cabin less and less and of course did less and less. All the trails that I had kept open or cut grew over. My little loading dock that I used as a work bench fell apart. I haven't changed the oil on the chipper for two years or more; it is black, black, black. It was a big deal to cut the grass and clear some fallen trees this year on our main loop.

My allergy is not so bad, maybe it was a high dose of zinc tablets, but I'm starting to catch up a bit. But, oh there is still so much to do. And soon it will be wood cutting season and I haven't even split all of the wood I cut last year.

In this context, I thought of all the people who came before me who changed the woods and then the woods hid much of their work.

Sometime in the 19th century I'm sure that loggers came through and cut the great white pines. The only untouched stand I know of is "The Pinery" somewhere off Lake County 2, probably a half hour east and north of us. It has a few trees that were growing in George Washington's time.

We are now left with mostly balsam and aspen, lots of alder, some birch and red maple, a very few sugar maples, and a large variety of other shrubs and small trees.

In the first decade of the twentieth century a man named Bond homesteaded what is now our 80 acres. He probably cleared some portion of the land for farming. Maybe he built the rock wall that is now covered with brush and left some of the fence wire that we constantly pull up. Probably he dug the well that has now collapsed and has a large balsam growing at the side of hole. I don't know if he or somebody later built the house that we found in decrepit condition.

To be continued.